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THREAT-CloudControlPlane-CrossAccountExfil Sumo Logic CSE · Sumo

Detect Cloud-Native Data Exfiltration via Cross-Account Resource Sharing in Sumo Logic CSE

Adversaries with cloud administrative access can exfiltrate data without ever touching an endpoint agent or crossing a monitored network egress point, by using the cloud provider's own control plane to grant an attacker-controlled account read access to victim data. Common patterns include modifying an S3 bucket policy or ACL to grant access to an external AWS account (or to 'AllUsers'), sharing an EBS or RDS snapshot with an external account ID via ModifySnapshotAttribute/ModifyDBSnapshotAttribute, and granting AMI launch permissions to an external account via ModifyImageAttribute. Because the resulting data transfer happens entirely within the cloud provider's backbone between the victim account and the attacker's own account, it never appears in DeviceNetworkEvents, proxy logs, or DLP tooling — the only telemetry is the management-plane API call itself, recorded in AWS CloudTrail (or the equivalent Azure Activity Log / GCP Admin Activity log). Scattered Spider has been observed enumerating and exporting cloud snapshots and VM images during intrusions to stage data outside victim-controlled infrastructure; LAPSUS$ operators have similarly abused overly permissive cloud IAM access to copy source repositories and storage buckets to attacker-owned tenants. Detection must live in cloud audit-log telemetry rather than host or network telemetry, and hinges on distinguishing grants to known organizational account IDs (legitimate cross-account architectures, DR replication) from grants to unrecognized account IDs or public principals.

MITRE ATT&CK

Tactic
Exfiltration

Sumo Detection Query

Sumo Logic CSE (Sumo)
sql
_sourceCategory="aws/cloudtrail"
(eventSource="s3.amazonaws.com" and (eventName="PutBucketPolicy" or eventName="PutBucketAcl"))
or (eventSource in ("ec2.amazonaws.com","rds.amazonaws.com") and (eventName="ModifySnapshotAttribute" or eventName="ModifyDBSnapshotAttribute" or eventName="ModifyImageAttribute"))
| json field=_raw "requestParameters" as requestParametersRaw nodrop
| where requestParametersRaw matches "*\"Principal\":\"*\"*"
    or requestParametersRaw matches "*AllUsers*"
    or requestParametersRaw matches "*\"group\":\"all\"*"
    or (requestParametersRaw matches "*arn:aws:iam::*" and !(requestParametersRaw matches "*<YOUR_ORG_ACCOUNT_ID>*"))
| eval ThreatType = if(eventName="PutBucketPolicy" or eventName="PutBucketAcl", "S3_CrossAccount_PolicyExposure",
    if(eventName="ModifyImageAttribute", "AMI_CrossAccount_Share",
    if(eventName="ModifyDBSnapshotAttribute", "RDSSnapshot_CrossAccount_Share", "EBSSnapshot_CrossAccount_Share")))
| eval RiskScore = if(requestParametersRaw matches "*AllUsers*" or requestParametersRaw matches "*\"Principal\":\"*\"*", 95, 80)
| stats count as Events, max(RiskScore) as MaxRisk by eventName, userIdentity.arn, sourceIPAddress, recipientAccountId, ThreatType
| sort by MaxRisk desc
high severity high confidence

Sumo Logic Cloud SIEM search over AWS CloudTrail events, identifying S3 bucket policy/ACL exposure and EBS/RDS snapshot or AMI permission grants to public groups or external account IDs. Extracts the requestParameters JSON payload and flags grants that reference an account ID outside the organization's known allowlist.

Data Sources

Sumo Logic Cloud SIEMAWS CloudTrail (via Sumo Logic AWS Source)

Required Tables

_sourceCategory=aws/cloudtrail

False Positives & Tuning

  • Legitimate cross-account DR/replication targeting a sibling account not yet reflected in the organization account allowlist — maintain the allowlist as a Sumo Logic lookup table synced from AWS Organizations
  • Terraform/CloudFormation automation roles performing scheduled, approved bucket policy updates — exclude by userIdentity.arn matching known IaC service role ARNs

Other platforms for THREAT-CloudControlPlane-CrossAccountExfil


Testing Methodology

Validate this detection against 1 adversary technique from Atomic Red Team. Each test below lists the behaviour to exercise and the telemetry you should expect to see. Executable commands and cleanup steps are available with Pro.

  1. Test 1Simulate S3 Bucket Policy Exposure to External Account

    Expected signal: AWS CloudTrail management event: eventName=PutBucketPolicy, eventSource=s3.amazonaws.com, requestParameters containing the external account ARN 999999999999 and Principal grant.

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